From the 28th floor in their offices on Third Avenue in Manhattan, Mike Palisi (center) leads Van Wagner’s collegiate business, along with top lieutenants Mike Wolfert (left) and Mark Donley.Courtesy of Van Wagner Sports & Entertainment

Van Wagner’s startup college business signed its first school in 2015. Three years later, the collegiate multimedia rights division headed by Mike Palisi has 24 clients and expects to surpass 30 by the time football season starts.

While Learfield and IMG College clearly are the two most dominant agencies in the college space with more than 200 schools combined, Palisi, a former athletic administrator at Rutgers and Maine, has quietly assembled a lengthy list of multimedia rights from across the country. Outside of Learfield and IMG College, no company has more.

“We saw a void and thought we could fill it,” Palisi said.

That void is in the area called mid-majors — NCAA Division I schools at the bottom of the FBS, and sometimes outside of the FBS altogether. It’s with those smaller programs that Van Wagner has built its college business.

Palisi, who spent a decade running the day-to-day business at Nelligan Sports before it was bought by Learfield four years ago, saw untapped value in mid-major schools and conferences.

Stony Brook, a quaint, mid-sized university on 1,000 acres of Long Island, had never outsourced its corporate sponsorship program before Van Wagner won its rights through a bid process. Palisi convinced athletic director Shawn Heilbron that he could grow the Seawolves’ sponsorship revenue.

After two years with Van Wagner, Stony Brook saw a 178 percent increase in total sponsorship revenue versus what the school was doing in-house. Van Wagner sold three multiyear deals, each valued in the six figures annually. A small Division I athletic department like Stony Brook’s simply couldn’t match Van Wagner’s reach and sales acumen.

“They really know how to monetize schools our size,” Heilbron said. “They know where the opportunities are. They’ve perfected the art of creating partnerships with schools at our level.”

Van Wagner’s client list ranges from FBS schools, such as Florida International and Georgia State, to basketball-centric programs at Saint Joseph’s, Loyola Marymount and Pepperdine. The deals call for Van Wagner to pay a financial guarantee, typically in the low-to-mid six figures annually, compared to the bigger programs that draw annual guarantees in the seven figures and up.

Georgia State, one of Van Wagner’s first college clients in 2015, has seen its multimedia revenue jump from $400,000 to more than $1 million annually. Revenue projections for 2018-19 approach $2 million. Those are vital dollars for programs whose yearly budgets are a fraction of schools in the power five.

“There are niches for everybody,” said Georgia State AD Charlie Cobb, who also is using Van Wagner to sell naming rights for its football stadium. “The dominant players can’t service everybody. That creates opportunities for companies like Van Wagner.”

Palisi also brought to Van Wagner the campuswide marketing strategy that Nelligan employed so effectively. At Georgia State, Van Wagner was tasked with aggregating the rights from the main campus and its five perimeter campuses — 52,000 students in all — for a pouring rights deal that generated nearly three times more revenue from Coca-Cola.

Now they’re working on campuswide sponsorship deals for banking and health care. “They’ve really got the confidence of everyone across campus,” Cobb said.

Palisi has Van Wagner rolling now, but it was just four years ago that the 50-year-old found himself at a career crossroads. He had spent 10 years helping build Nelligan into a formidable collegiate agency with multimedia rights at 41 schools. But when owner T.J. Nelligan sold his company to Learfield in 2014, Palisi had a decision to make. He could go to work for Learfield or he could start over by forming his own business.

Palisi called a contact at Van Wagner, Jessica Mudry, to gauge whether the sales agency might be interested in creating a partnership. He heard from Van Wagner President Jeff Knapple within 24 hours and they started plotting a move deeper into college sports.

Instead of starting his own shop, Palisi scratched his entrepreneurial itch by forming a new college services division under the Van Wagner flag.

“At the time, they were really looking to increase their presence in sports,” Palisi said.

Van Wagner, like Nelligan before it, quickly earned a reputation as a company that understood how to market and sell the smaller programs. Its mantra was to provide so much transparency that the school felt like it was still operating an in-house sales team, even after it outsourced to Van Wagner.

Palisi was adamant about sharing financials with school partners and integrating the sales staff into the athletic department.

“It’s a hybrid of sorts,” said Mark Donley, senior vice president at Van Wagner. “It just showed that the industry was ready for something different.”

While Van Wagner has cultivated its reputation on smaller programs, Palisi firmly believes his approach will work with power five schools as well. Van Wagner has pitched most of the power five programs that have had an open bid process and it’s still seeking that first big win.

“Our playbook works everywhere,” Palisi said. “But at the same time, we’re showing that you can be profitable if you’re not in the power five.”